Helping America's Youth

No longer selling drugs, Manyka now counsels young people who face the same choices she did. "I'm giving back to the community because they gave to me," she says.

Manyka says her experiences—both selling drugs and learning that selling drugs is wrong—inform how she helps her community. "I [say, 'I] was in your shoes, but I'm standing now. They told me that I would never be anything, I wouldn't make it. But I'm standing because I had a choice,'" Manyka says. "I did all of the wrong things, thinking that I was no one and nobody and nobody cared. But somebody reached out to me—my coaches, my grandmother, the teachers, my pastor."